Chapter 79: [79]: The +50 Anomaly, A Radical Gamble

Step fifty.

Declan stood entirely alone in the middle of the massive white marble landing.

The chaotic noise of clashing metal and shattering code had completely vanished.

The gray phantoms that had swarmed him for the last thirty steps had simply frozen in place. They lowered their glowing weapons and dissolved back into the suffocating dark void.

A heavy silence hung in the air.

Around him, a thick and swirling barrier of dark red energy roared like a localized hurricane. His Blood Shield was currently sitting at an absurd forty-five thousand points of capacity. He had farmed the legendary ghosts of other worlds like they were simply low-level rats!

He rested the massive dark matter shaft of the +40 Eclipse Severance halberd casually on his right shoulder. The tiny black hole in the center of the razor-thin blade hummed hungrily as it ate the faint light bouncing off the marble.

He looked up.

The spiraling staircase stretched endlessly upward into the pitch-black nothingness. There was no top in sight. He was only halfway there.

Declan let out a long breath. He didn’t feel tired, but he opened his system interface anyway to check his biological state.

[Stamina: 42 / 100]

He frowned. That was a big problem.

His massive Abyssal Sovereign stats gave him a ridiculous health pool and enough base strength to snap a giant’s neck. But stamina was a fixed resource. The system rules for the Ascension Trial clearly stated that natural stamina regeneration was disabled. He couldn’t drink a potion to get it back either.

He had used Void Blink a few times, but mostly, the stamina drain came from the sheer physical exertion of swinging a four-hundred-pound weapon over and over again. Even with his stats, fighting non-stop took a heavy toll. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

"I have fifty more steps to go," Declan muttered to himself as his voice echoed in the empty void. "If the system keeps throwing waves of Level 60 phantoms at me, I am going to zero out my stamina bar around step eighty."

If he ran out of stamina, he couldn’t swing his halberd. He couldn’t use Void Blink. He would just be a walking punching bag! His Blood Shield was massive, but against an infinite army of max-level enemies, it would eventually break.

He needed to change his strategy. He needed to outsource the labor.

Declan opened his digital inventory. The blue holographic screen popped up and glowed brightly against the dark backdrop of the trial.

He had a completely absurd amount of Origin Points sitting in his treasury right now. Slaying the Level 15 World Boss Gargantua had given him a fortune, but dropping a literal space station onto the Dune Leviathan had broken the bank entirely.

[Current Origin Points: 11,450,000]

Over eleven million points! It was a number that didn’t even make sense in the context of the game. Normal players were incredibly happy when they found a rusty dagger worth ten points.

"I need a summon," Declan said.

He rapidly scrolled through the massive pile of junk gear and skill books he had looted from the Black Vanguard guild and the various monsters in the Ashlands. He bypassed the iron swords, the heavy shields, and the basic elemental magic books.

He stopped when he saw a dull and gray-colored book sitting near the bottom of his storage. He had picked it up off a random rogue player he had deleted back in the Howling Gorge.

[Skill Book: Summon Shadow]

↳ Type: Active Skill

↳ Tier: Scavenged

↳ Description: Consume 10 Mana to summon a fragile shadow decoy. The decoy possesses 10% of the user’s base health and cannot deal damage. It actively taunts nearby enemies for 10 seconds before dissipating.

↳ Buyout Price: 5 Origin Points.

It was absolute trash. It was a beginner’s distraction tool meant to buy a player a few seconds to run away from a fight.

"Perfect," Declan smiled.

He tapped the book in his inventory. The gray skill book materialized in his hand. He slapped it directly against his chest. The book shattered into a burst of dull light and absorbed right into his skin, downloading the basic digital code into his neural link.

[Skill Learned: Summon Shadow Level 1]

Declan didn’t even test it out. A decoy with zero damage was completely useless to him. He needed an army.

"System," Declan commanded, his dark eyes locking onto his massive point balance. "Open the enhancement menu. Target the Summon Shadow skill. Push it to plus fifty. Ignore all safety protocols and do not stop for the warning labels."

He had never pushed an item or a skill to plus fifty before. The +40 halberd had required him to literally break the server’s local physics engine. He had no idea what +50 would do to the core code. But he had eleven million points to burn and he was feeling reckless!

The system hesitated. The blue interface actually flickered as it struggled to process the sheer mathematical absurdity of his request.

[System Enhancement Initiated. Calculating cost...]

[Warning: Point requirement exceeds all known parameters.]

↳ Cost for +1 to +50: 10,000,000 Origin Points.

Ten million points. A flat ten million.

"Take it," Declan ordered instantly.

The points vanished from his bank. His balance dropped down to a little over a million.

The reaction was catastrophic.

A blinding and violent white light erupted from Declan’s chest. It was so bright it physically pushed the dark void back and illuminated the massive spiral staircase for miles.

The system chimes didn’t just ring in his head. They screamed! It sounded like a massive fire alarm blaring right next to his eardrums.

[Summon Shadow +10... +20... +30...]

A massive wall of red warning boxes exploded in his vision, completely blinding him to the outside world.

[CRITICAL ERROR!]

[Skill density exceeding server capacity!]

[Neural link collapse imminent! Immediate host deletion recommended!]

The headache hit him like a punch to the head, making his ears ring and his skull throb. It was a sharp and splitting agony that drove him right down to his knees on the white marble. Blood immediately started pouring out of his nose and the corners of his eyes.

The game was actively trying to rip the skill out of his brain before it destroyed the sector’s code.

Declan gritted his teeth and gripped the side of his head. "Override!" he roared.

His SSS-Rank talent, Boundless Enhancement, surged forward. It didn’t negotiate with the system’s safety parameters. It acted like a digital bulldozer, violently crushing the game’s rules and forcing the enhancement through.

[Talent: Boundless Enhancement overriding error.]

[Safety protocols bypassed. Cap removed.]

[Summon Shadow +35... +42... +48... +50.]

[Skill has reached +50.]

The blinding white light suddenly shifted. It didn’t turn purple or red. It turned into a pure and absolute black that was darker than the void around him.

The heavy red warning boxes shattered into millions of tiny digital pieces. The splitting headache vanished instantly, replaced by a cold and overwhelming sensation of sheer authority settling into his chest.

[Triggering Ultimate Conceptual Mutation...]

The system text did not appear in the standard blue or the warning red. It flashed in a brilliant and glowing gold that burned itself into his vision.

[Skill Mutated: Legion of the Eclipse Sovereign]

↳ Type: Active Skill (Sovereign Tier)

↳ Cost: 500 Mana

↳ Description: The user commands the absolute authority of the void. Summons an army of immortal shadow clones.

↳ Functionality: Generates exactly one hundred clones of the host. Each clone possesses 100% of the user’s base stats, passive skills, and currently equipped weapon traits. Clones do not possess a health bar. They cannot be destroyed by physical or magical damage. Clones persist until dismissed by the host or until the host’s mana pool reaches zero.

Declan knelt on the marble floor and stared at the golden text. He read it twice to make sure his brain wasn’t just hallucinating from the pain.

One hundred clones.

One hundred percent of his stats.

One hundred percent of his weapon traits.

And they were completely immune to standard damage!

He looked at the +40 Eclipse Severance halberd resting on the ground next to him. The weapon had the Spacetime Laceration trait. It didn’t deal physical damage, it actually deleted the coordinate plane the enemy was standing on.

If his clones had 100% of his weapon traits, that meant he just bought an army of one hundred soldiers who could all cast localized server wipes with every swing.

Declan started laughing. It was a low and dark sound that echoed across the empty staircase. He pushed himself off the floor and stood up, wiping the blood from his face.

"The developers are going to be so mad at me," Declan grinned.

He didn’t need to worry about his stamina bar anymore. He didn’t need to swing his halberd another fifty times. He had completely broken the trial’s intended difficulty loop.

He looked up the spiral staircase. The gray and ashy fog was starting to roll down from step fifty-one. The system was preparing the next wave of Phantom Kings.

"Let’s test the new recruits," Declan said.

He tapped into his massive mana pool. The skill required 500 mana to cast. He had over 15,000 thanks to his stats and gear.

"Legion of the Eclipse Sovereign."

He didn’t yell the command. He just spoke it with absolute authority.

The shadows cast by his heavy spiked boots suddenly expanded. The dark ink-like pools spread rapidly across the white marble landing, bubbling and hissing like boiling water.

Then, the shadows stood up.